


Trieste

by mydeira, Sadbhyl



Series: Responsible Adults (aka, The Menageaverse) [33]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:45:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydeira/pseuds/mydeira, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadbhyl/pseuds/Sadbhyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joyce mourns her losses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trieste

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place about a month after the events of Who Watches and the same amount of time before the episode Bargaining.
> 
> Written by Sadbhyl, beta'd by Mydeira.

I thought I was prepared for Buffy’s death.

I mean, I had known it was coming for two years. And when she told me it had already happened once, I didn’t think anything could hurt worse. That she could have died and I wouldn’t ever have known . . . what would they have told me? That she’d run away? Would they have told me, brought her body home and tried to explain to me that she’d been a vampire slayer and it had gotten her killed? I’d been sick to my stomach for days after she told me, woke up in cold sweats in the middle of the night after dreaming about finding her cold, mangled corpse. I would lay there, heart pounding, breathless, trying to separate dream from reality. And then I’d hear the shower and know that even though it was two thirty in the morning, she was safe, and she was home. I resisted the need to check in on her every time. She wouldn’t have appreciated me hovering.

Nothing I’d imagined could have prepared me for the reality.

We couldn’t go through a funeral home for her burial. Funeral homes required death certificates which meant autopsies. But an autopsy would show she had been beaten to death. Death by mystical forces just wasn’t on the coroner’s list of possibilities, even in Sunnydale. So there would have been questions about who had beaten her so badly and why we hadn’t filed a report with the police. And it would have spread the word to those in the know that the Slayer was dead and Sunnydale was unprotected. So we had been forced to do it ourselves.

The easiest thing would have been to have her cremated. But I couldn’t bring myself to agree to it, and in the end Willow had come to me and encouraged me not to. She and Tara had found a pretty spot where no one would find her, and I was relieved. I could bury her more easily than I could mutilate her, despite her fear of being buried alive. All chance of that was gone. Xander built the coffin himself, not sleeping for two days as he built a work of art out of mahogany and cedar. Rupert helped me prepare the body, and Ethan cast a preservation spell on her. “It won’t last long,” he had said quietly. “A few days at the most. But it gives you time to do what you need to do.”

I don’t remember much of the service. Tara officiated, and it was at night to be away from prying eyes and to allow Buffy’s vampire friends to attend. Angel came back from LA with Willow, and they brought with them Buffy’s school friend Cordelia and her substitute Watcher Mr. Wyndham-Pryce. They all seemed just as overwhelmed as Buffy’s close friends. Everyone spoke, sharing memories of Buffy in turn. Even Dawn added a story. But I couldn’t find the words. I just kept staring at this beautiful hardwood box that held the remains of my only natural daughter and kept waiting to wake up. Tara sang something beautiful, and then the men carefully lowered the box into the hole they had prepared. I just watched, fighting the urge to jump in with her with each shovel full of dirt. It should be me in there. I should be the one who was dead, and she should be alive to mourn me.

When it was over, the bare earth covered with new sod, Rupert and Ethan took Dawn and I home.

And now we were supposed to get back to life as usual.

But nothing is normal now. And no amount of pretending will make it so.

The others go out patrolling every night. No one’s been seriously hurt yet, but they can’t keep this up forever. Ethan’s been summoning the simulacrum periodically to make sure the Slayer is seen around town. Those are the nights Spike comes to the house and drinks himself into a stupor. He’s here a lot now, mostly spending time with Dawn. I would almost be worried about the attention he pays her if I weren’t really just relieved. Dawn and I aren’t doing so well together. I know I’m crowding her, smothering her, but I can’t help it. She’s all I have left, and if something came along and took her away as well . . . “I’m not Buffy!” she screams at me more and more often these days. “You can’t use me to make up to her for being a bad mother!” Usually after these statements she storms off to Janice’s or Spike’s, leaving me alone with the awful truth that I was a bad mother, and when it really mattered, I didn’t protect my child.

I try not to blame Ethan for that. He was looking out for me, and more than likely acting on orders from Rupert and Buffy when he put me to sleep. But the less rational part of my head hates him for keeping me from being there. I should have been there. My blood is Summers blood, too. I could have been the sacrifice, saved them both. But I wasn’t, because of what Ethan did. I try not to let the resentment show, but I think he feels it. He’s quieter, more reserved than he ever was before. And he doesn’t try to touch me so much any more. It might be a good thing, because I don’t know how I’d react if he did. But I miss the contact.

Rupert is just as distant, and I think I know why. Ever since he got back from England, he’s gotten more and more withdrawn. There’s nothing left for him here now. With Buffy dead, he has no reason to stay in Sunnydale. He is working himself up to breaking it off with me and with Ethan. I can feel it in his long silences and furtive looks. Well, I’m not going to make it harder on him. If he wants to go, fine. I won’t burden him with my pain and loneliness. Let him leave. I won’t make myself vulnerable again.

Maybe it is for the best. I never really let myself think about whether what we were doing was right. Certainly Buffy had never approved. I keep trying to convince myself that it was just experimentation, a midlife crisis of the post-divorce kind. They will leave, and I’ll move on, to a normal man with a normal life. The way it should have been. The way Buffy would have wanted it.

I can’t let the tears on my face be for anything else but her.


End file.
